SPIRITUAL ALCHEMYAlchemists speak of retorts, furnaces, and chemicals, but are really talking about transformations taking place in their own bodies, minds, and souls.

We should now proceed to find a neutral, or unitarian, language in which every concept we use is applicable as well to the unconscious as to matter, in order to overcome this wrong view that the unconscious psyche and matter are two things. --Professor Wolfgang Pauli

Alchemy is an irreducible fusion of science and art that also happens to be therapeutic or growth-promoting and hints at illumination. The process begins with doubts and lack of conviction but time spent on self-knowledge is amply rewarded. Alchemists are contemplative researchers versed in the science of personal transformation and the art of inner magic.

Spiritual alchemy is a grand experiment you perform on yourself with critical introspection and objective investigation. You can discover your deeper nature as a multidimensional synthesis of subjective/objective, qualitative/quantitative, mind/matter, wave/particle.

It is the responsibility of each individual to bring about their own transformation and be free to reincarnate now, to embody that transformation fully. The outer is the inner, and the inner is the outer. Lived reality is only experienced reality and is always transformed before it is experienced.

Alchemy increases your capacity to relate to inward-flowing content. You can regenerate yourself. You are the world and the world is you. You can deny or affirm the sacred. By changing yourself, you change everything. You can be a light unto yourself, lit by yourself. You are the cosmos and the cosmos is you.

Alchemists sought the experience of Unus Mundus, the one world united through material, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects. Science illuminates the spiritual quest, and spiritual tech illuminates the deep nature of matter and our nature. Paradoxically, when we look into the depths of matter, we look into the depths of ourselves. Scientists and mystics report similar phenomena in their models and phenomenology. Spiritual technologies, the software of sacred penetration and amplification, virtually predicted the fine nature of matter as nothing but a complex illusion - what we have come to understand as a hologram. Mystics have also always emphasized the primal nature of Light, and claimed that we are in fact made of light itself. Science has confirmed this in numerous ways.

"The secret of alchemy is this: there is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call a 'field of force.' The field acts on the observer and puts him in a priveleged position vis-a-vis the Universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work." ~ Fulcanelli, 1937

“The changing of bodies into light and light into bodies, is very comfortable to the course of nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.” ~ Opticks, Sir Isaac Newton

“Ultimately, the Stone should be considered a catalyst to instruct the body code to overcome its inherited weakness and rebuild a better, stronger vital metabolism that is not just self-repairing, but building to an optimal state of health. . .The Stone has the seed of all DNA in an archetypal form and gives the correct, original instructions to the potential new cells. This enables generations of mutation/adaptation of the organism to self-correct.” ~ Dr. Ross Mack

In the 20th Century, Carl Jung described alchemy in terms of depth psychology and shed new light on an old science. Contemporary 21st Century alchemy can be viewed as a dynamic process in terms of Chaos Theory and its related sciences. Dynamics is a revolutionary universal tool, a novel practice which helps us grasp the processes of development in ourselves, in nature, in our world and the cosmos. Dynamics is a synthesis of recent scientific advances and theories: system dynamics, living systems, general systems, chaos, edge-of-chaos, complexity, emergence, complex adaptive systems, quantum gravity, attractors, homeodynamics, and self-organization.Alchemy is the Great Work, a process of separation, transformation and integration. This is just as true of the substances worked experimentally in the retort as it is of the personality undergoing the transformative process. The mindbody is a crucible for refining the vehicles of consciousness. By altering your own consciousness, you alter your relation to the universe, and this changes your world.

Alchemy is an accelerated pathway to self-mastery, to self-realization. It is an alternative, pre-scientific spiritual and philosophical interpretation of life, encompassing its physical, emotional and mental aspects. It is an elegant worldview still relevant in contemporary life. The alchemist is the catalytic agent of this spiritual chemistry.

There are many ways to articulate the dynamic process. Process is a way of doing, not what is being done. Alchemy is a process-oriented path, emphasizing awareness of internal experience over external striving and emphasizing a connection with the sacred. It demands self-honesty, self-responsibility and an overarching desire to live life as a spiritual path. More than simply developing self, the alchemist transforms chaos to Cosmos.

There are three primary aspects of alchemy:

1. Alchemy as theory, is a comprehensive philosophical vision of the cosmos, built on the universal correspondence system.

2. Alchemy as practice may be viewed as a creative discipline, an art-form, involving one in the imaginal realm of soul-making.

3. Alchemy, as a transcendental search or quest, has the primary goal of liberation from the world. This is the knowledge of immortality, through the union of opposites.Paracelsus described alchemy as the voluntary action of man in harmony with the involuntary action of nature. If the center of the creative process takes place in the "heart of man," his intentions take on profound significance. They can now affect, or influence, the destinies of the cosmos. Attainment of this state is known as the production of the Philosopher's Stone or Diamond Body.

The Philosopher's Stone may be equated with the Body of Light (Photonic Body; Scalar Field Body), the Resurrection Body, or the Immortal Body. Alchemy strives for the experience of spiritual rebirth through the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage. The Philosopher's Stone is also a symbol of the embryonic Self. It is the product of the sacred marriage, which has been characterized in alchemy as the royal union of the Sun (+) and the Moon (-).

Polarized positions may be symbolized variously as positive-negative, male-female, god-devil, spirit-matter, mother-father, etc. This marriage creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical or divine child. One of the alchemical goals is to create an eternal body for post-mortal continuation of the spirit and the soul, a radiant body of coherent photonic Zero-Point energy, a Rainbow Body.The process of making the Philosopher's Stone is a repitition of the creation myth via imagery. The imagery reverses the evolutional direction. It begins with animal images, then proceeds through images of plant life to more fundamental forms. The final goal is symbolized by metal, stone, or crystal.

The deep nature of the Photonic Body, the energy body, is this same Light. We all have a light-filled body, but more are real-I-zing that Light is our truly fundamental nature. We can embody the evidence of that Brilliance. We are nothing but Brilliance; "Nothing", but Brilliance. Transformation is real-I-zation at ever-deeper levels of existence. Yet psychological resistance is as real as electrical resistance.

Absolute space is the womb of creation and the physics of virtual photon fluctuation reflects not only Nature, but our nature. Spiritual traditions have spoken about emanation within the Divine and Illumination since the dawn of human history. But only now are we learning just how literal that experience of Light is, and the interactive mechanisms it engages in our holistic psychophysical Being.

The Alchemist David Teniers the Younger, 1610-1690

Outer Body Experience

An outer body experience is one of vastly expanded awareness. We aren't out of the body but recognize our vast potential connections as oceanic experience. We are wave upon interpenetrating waves of virtually infinite potential. Alchemy is all about enhancing psychophysical imaginal capacity. We can tap the holographic memories of our existential blueprint, becoming transparent to transcendence, rather than operating well below our optimal capacity at the plateau of consensus reality or 'normalcy.'

Felt-sense is our physical awareness of life processes. The body takes precedence in bottom-up processing. Felt-sense helps us know what is at the edge of our thinking. We learn to articulate our implicit knowing. Focusing attention inward in the body, we learn to sense fear, tensions or openness in centers in our energy body. There is no disowning, but a re-embracing and expansion of the body in amplified identification, including cosmic zero-point.

Old Millenium notions, (medieval, classical and Theosophical), of astral projection meant consciousness left the physical body in the subtle body of light and was free to roam the astral plane or travel to other places on Earth. It involved dissociation from the physical body to which the aspirant remained attached by a Silver Cord. It probably developed from Near-Death Experiences (NDE), the shutting down of certain brain processes in biological crisis, commonly including a tunnel of light.

New Millennium soul travel is a slightly different approach, requiring no disowning of the gross material body in order to incorporate subtle aspects of the universal. In this sense, it stays perhaps closer to the alchemical phase state, One World. Rather than entering a trance state, the aspirant remains lucid, engaging in breathing and visualization practices. To journey outward or inward is essentially the same. Transmodern "etheric travel" means folding space and time, travelling without moving about one's conceptually expanded Being. It has been called cosmic consciousness.

We can view ourselves as all parts of the gestalt, including the primordial ground as well as any systems within it. There is simply no sense of separation. It is a subtle but important shift in awareness. We can experience the whole spectrum of the taxonomy of altered or discreet states of consciousness (Tart), the "heavens and hells" or bardo states (Leary, et al) of other models. The field patterns of the finest organization of energy and matter also affect the evolution of the cosmos. You are a nonlocal quantum field entity in coherent connection with All.

The unfathomable ocean of our virtuality is a dynamic energetic infusion, an expanded sense of NowHere, a leap of faith into the Abyss. We are challenged to fully comprehend the truth of our existence. This is how we become more than we formerly thought we were. As William James said, "My experience is what I attend to." Negative time extracts massergy from the limitless ocean of roiling subspace making negentropic or syntropic transformation in a nanosecond a real potential.

The quantum vaccum is a highly anomlous universal energy realm of pure potential. We are that nondual dynamic "ocean of active information" in wave form. It is both the source and destination of all matter in the universe, and thus of any form of consciousness which may emerge through its autopoeitic process. The human brain, with its pronounced and constant state of chaos, could receive and amplify such signals, expressed both consciously and unconsciously in our biophsyical self and our ephemeral thoughts and intuitions.

We integrate through our immediate experience of paranormal potential. We can live as uncollapsing quantum superpositions in that bountiful ocean of soul and spirit. Distractions cease, replaced by the direct impact of oceanic expansion of the energetically superdense quantum vacuum -- purely informational scalar force.

We are modified physically in this way by breathing as the negentropic potential (bioplasma) of cosmos. Scalars are massless and vectorless -- neither ‘light’ nor ‘matter’, but longitudinally propagating fluctuations below the energy-threshold of particle pair-creation. This produces a self-generating cosmological feedback cycle which translates into interference patterns created by the motion of charged particles modifying the local topology of the vacuum. The modified vacuum field modifies in turn the motion of the particles and your being is transmuted.

In a system driven beyond equilibrium, the subtle interconnectedness beneath its surface emerges to reshape the system itself. Even visual images can be derived from non-visual sources. Metaphorms are ways of implying likeness between things, such as the macrocosm and microcosm, the cosmos and the weird world of the quantum and subspace domains. Alchemy tells us, "As Above, So Below." In this way it anticipated our discovery of scale-invariant fractals. What is true for subspace is true for superspace.

Our brain imposes its dynamics on everything we make--from concepts about the universe to techniques used to test or represent these concepts, from chaos to order. Process morphs connect us with everything we create and are influenced by. Metaphorming is a principal means of exploring the world, relating information from one discipline to another, connecting potentially all sources and forms of information. Metaphorms are expressions of nature's unity.

Science also uses metaphorms. In Bohm's causal interpretation of QM, we inhabit an ocean of "active information"--the ever-flowing, ever-changing pattern of the meaning of life itself. The entire inner and outer environment includes the whole field of electromagnetic information, which patterns our electronic bodies. But we also are subject to the patterning effects of the whole of existence, a global pool of information, a pool of being, which is paradoxically rooted in non-existence.

Physicists, artists and alchemists are metaphorming when tthey create words or images for describing novel relationships or creative visualization. Visual metaphorms, in particular, inspire hypotheses, and vice versa. Alchemists, scientists and artists take two facts or experiences that seem separated, and find a likeness in them, and create a unity by showing the likeness.

All science-art is the search for unity in hidden likenesses. Somtimes they reveal themselves in synchronicities. Synchronicity is a bubbling up of ever-fresh forms, patterns, and connections that transcend all boundaries between mind and matter, the physical and the spiritual.

The elements of alchemy still power the world with fire (solar), earth (geothermal), air (windpower) and water (hydro). They likewise power us internally, including the fifth element quintessence -- our bioplasmic life energy. All are rooted in the negentropic zero point potential.

STATE OF THE ART - The ancient art of alchemy was the search for spirit in matter. In modern life, it is a way of contacting and deepening your own relationship with the sacred dimension of life. We "die to live" in meditation daily. The undying state does not mean living in the physical body forever, but living the Eternal in each and every moment fully aware of our multidimensional existence. We can touch the timeless realm in any instant by moving from mind to awareness. Enlightenment can come at anytime from NowHere. We can draw from the nourishing essence of our negentropic Source. We can feed the energy body with living light, and practice identifying with that finer body as the vehicle of our consciousness. Meditation is preparation for merging with the eternal, consciously and purposefully.

STATE OF THE HEART - Alchemy is a heartful path of living dedication, symbolized by the relationship of mystical brothers and sisters. You are the alchemical vessel and the contents of your psyche is the means and object of transformation so you can realize your potential. There are deeper dimensions of soul and spirit beyond ego gratification. Active evocation of the imagination reveals your invisible depths. Practice and service ground these in life. You embody the principles. Understanding of your own essence is like a beacon that draws you into an even deeper connection with the sacred. SPIRITUAL & PRACTICAL ALCHEMY

There is theory and practice in science, and two applications in alchemy -- spiritual alchemy and experimental alchemy involving literal lab work. You can work either method separately or both in concert. Like mystics of all paths who have gone before, we make the experiment on ourselves. Our true selves are beyond what our conscious awareness alone could ever make of us. Both Jungian and Transpersonal psychology deal far more clearly with the same process we find in alchemy. Here the nonlinear process is described. Astrology, kabbalistic and even chemical elements are seen as archetypal, symbolic forces operating in a holistic system.

The Magnum Opus and the Philosopher' s Stone

Some of the most beautiful, mystical and philosophical writings, are found in the ancient works and literatures of the Hermetic masters, and philosophers.

These beautiful works are true works of art, and as one begins to penetrate their most wonderful allegories and metaphors, one realizes a depth and a profundity of a symbolic language that is inspiring and elevating in a very mystical and magical way as they possess and captivate one.

They speak in archetypal manners to the very soul of the adept who dares to embark on that noble work, which leads him to the great quests of the mythological heroes, the noble knights in search of the holy grail, the alchemists in search of the elixir of life, and to us as Rosicrucians who seek that which is the highest goal of all human life, cosmic consciousness.

In his 'De signatura rerum', Jacob Boehm reveals to us an axiom upon which this unique knowledge rests, this tradition that claims for itself universality and primordiality: he says, "Between Eternal Birth, Resurrection from the Fall and the discovery of the Philosopher' s Stone, there is no difference." In a work entitled," The Golden Tractate of Hermes" we read the following declaration by the philosopher' s stone itself.

" Understand then, O Son of Wisdom, what the Stone declares; protect me, and I will protect thee, increase my strength that I may help thee! My sol and my beams are most inward and secretly in my own Luna, my light, exceeding every light, and my good things are better than all other good things. I give freely, and I reward the intelligent with joy and gladness, glory, riches, delights; and them that seek after me I make to know and understand, and posses divine things."

So where would we seek this blessed thing? Where would we start looking for this most marvelous thing, this ultimate reality that all men and women truly seek, whether consciously or unconsciously without which man could never truly be happy ?

On the portals of the Temple of Delphi it is written,

"My advice to you, whoever you may be, Oh you who desire to explore the Mysteries of Nature; if you do not discover within yourself that which you seek, neither will you find it without. If you ignore the excellence of your own house, how can you aspire to find excellence elsewhere? Within you is hidden the treasure of treasures. Oh Man! Know thyself, and you will know the universe and the Gods.

Within us lies an excellence, a most wonderful presence, and it is this inner essence as the "Beloved Master Within" that we all truly yearn for and seek union with. This union of entity with the universal is the true magnificent formation of the Philosopher' s Stone.

Steve Kalec

The Alchemist Matheus Van Helmont, 1623-1679

Interior of a Laboratory with an Alchemist at WorkDavid Teniers the Younger, 1610-1690